This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: About Names
Feed Title: Pollock
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/pollock-rss.xml
Feed Description: Pollock - the next VW GUI
Peaches? That's the name of my cat! And you were on such a good roll with the names of painters. How about Picasso?
Here's my serious answer to the fun/rhetorical question:
In my mind, names for projects come about because of my background. Back in the early 80's, I was involved in Improvisational Theatre. I got involved with a group named Improv Olympics. There, and for about 3 years, I studied under Del Close. Who was Del Close? He was an founding member of Second City in the 50's. His co-members at the time included Mike Nickels, Elaine May and Avery Schriber. He brought Joan Rivers in from New York to be a member of Second City. He went on to become the Director of Second City, and directed and trained John and Jim Belushi, Dan Ackroid, Dave Steinberg, Gilda Radner, and on and on.
He left Second City in the 70's and went to California, where he directed an Improv group there named The Committee. He came back to Chicago and eventually joined the Improv Olympics as Artistic Director (The article above is wrong, Charna Halpern started the Improv Olympics prior to getting Del to come on board)... I was there. I was "sort of" a Board Member... The details are squishy.
Anyway, when Del arrived, I studied under him. After about a year, I became sort of his protege. Nothing formal, but I would regularly arrive early, and often he would join me in the "bar" downstairs, and we would talk (he would) about what the class should work on and so on. Without a doubt, it was an amazing time. I learned how to think about Improvisation from someone who was called "The Jedi Master Of Improv."
Concurrent with all that, I was learning how to program computers. A turning point came for me. I had to choose. Improvisation Theatre or Computers. Now, let me state right up front, I was at best "Good" at Improv, although at the time, I thought I was a bit better than just Good... maybe above Average. None the less, I had no illusion about my performance skills. However, from Del, as I said, I had learned how to think about Improv, and was learning how to teach and direct. That excited me. I must admit, it still does.
But choosing the "Improv Way Of Life" is a hard choice, if you were to really commit to it, and if I did, that's what I would have done. choosing to live a life in Improv, for me, was to chose to live on the edge. Either performing (which I didn't think I'd do) or directing, to do it right, there is no 1/2 way. Let's just say, I really do understand how Jim Belushi lived, and died. He lived an Improv life. Many others did too, most never went over the edge as Jim Belushi did. I suppose for those reading this, it is hard to comprehend that one could simply pigeonhole such things. I talked about it with Del though, quite a bit. All I can say is "Trust Me", it's real.
Many other things happened in my life at that time. My best friend, Tim Ferguson and I had been doing Comedy for over 10 years, since High School. He and I joined the Improv Olympics together. Tim was always a better performer than I was. Faster on his feet, wittier, the whole shebang. Without a doubt, he was a Star at Improv Olympics. I was his "partner," his 2nd banana. Don't get me wrong, I loved it. But a strange thing happened between us on a couple of fronts. First, even though he was one of the best Improvisers the I.O. had at the time, Del pretty much ignored Tim. For the first time in Tim and my relationship, I was the one getting attention. Also at that time, I had become engaged, and was spending my free time with Del and in classes, not with Tim. Finally, while Tim and I were working on a soft porn movie as the "Comic Relief" (direct to video, probably sold 10 copies), I was hit by a car, crossing the street at the end of one shot, on my way to the next.
So, I had a choice to make. At one point, I talked to Del, and he said "Your Only Mistake Is To Get Married." He was right, and of all my decisions in my life, that is the only one I truly regret. None the less, the fact that I was going to get married affected my decision. I chose Computers
But it turns out, I had already started living the Improv Life... I just did it a bit less on the edge than I would have had my choice been different. To this day, I find constant parallels between how I think about programming, and in particular, Objects, and the way I learned to think about Improv, Comedy and Theatre.
Which brings me, finally, to the point. In the world of Improv, you have to learn how to think spatially. You train to turn on and use the Right side of your brain. There are Improv training techniques to do this. One of them is called "Patterns." There are a series of exercises based on the idea of Patterns. A pattern is an association from one thing or idea to another. But the key to this, is not to be direct. It is to find an extended pattern between things. One exercise is to play a sort of "one-upmanship/word association" game. It may start with one person saying "Ace Of Spades" a good spatial "play" in the game would be to say "Jim Carey" (Ace Ventura), an obvious linear "play" would be "David Space", or "Shovel."
Another way of putting it is, it's easy to draw a circle, but hard to describe a circle by just drawing it's tangents (and as you see below, at least in terms of art, I'm not good at the latter)
Thus, my project names are all "Patterns." I studied the project Van Gogh, and since many of the ideas for Pollock came from that (and other) projects, the Pattern is "Abstraction." Few painters were more abstract Jackson Pollock. When thinking of doing native widgets, I understood that a native widget, on all OSs, under the hood they are really just windows. Marc Chagall created many beautiful Stained Glass Windows. And after all, a Stained Glass Window is just a bunch of windows in a window. When thinking about moving the GUI out of the VM and into the Image, the Pattern base is of course, emergence. Birth or Rebirth are obvious names... drawing the circle as it were. Even Cesarean isn't really a good move, still too directly evocative. Then I let my right brain fly, and remembered the cover photograph of Frank Zappa's Hot Rats album. The most famous tune from that Album is Peaches En Regalia... In fact, for about 3 days, the project WAS named Peaches En Regalia... but everyone thought it was too long a name or complex to remember or whatever. So, I changed it to Peaches, which by itself, represents another hop down the Pattern...
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